Hillary Clinton's email scandal, 'the greatest wild card' of the election, just got even more unpredictable

Bryan
Pagliano, a former State Department employee who helped set up
and maintain a private email server used by Hillary Rodham
Clinton, departs Capitol Hill in Washington, September 10, 2015,
to give his deposition to a House panel on the Benghazi
investigation.AP Photo/Cliff
Owen

Hillary Clinton's former IT director has been granted immunity by
the Justice Department in exchange for his cooperation with the
investigation into Clinton's private email server, The Washington
Post
reported Wednesday, a significant development in the
long-unfolding saga surrounding the Democratic presidential
frontrunner.

In early 2009, Clinton reportedly paid Bryan Pagliano, the IT
director, $5,000 to divert all of her emails to a new private
server.

The server set up by Pagliano replaced one used by Clinton's
husband, former President Bill Clinton, and was handed over to
the Denver-based company Platte River in 2013.

In October 2014, the House of Representatives
committee dedicated to investigating the 2012 terrorist attack on
the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya,
asked Clintonfor any emails she had relating to the
attack.

Pagliano was called before a congressional panel in
September as a part of that investigation, but invoked his
Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to
answer any questions.

The Clinton campaign's press secretary, Brian Fallon, tweeted
Wednesday that the Clinton campaign "disagreed" with Pagliano's
decision "not to answer questions from Benghazi Committee" and
that they are "pleased he is cooperating now."

Democratic
US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton arrives with her
daughter Chelsea and her husband President Clinton to speak to
supporters at her final 2016 New Hampshire presidential-primary
night rally in Manchester.Thomson
Reuters

Still, many political observers aren't so sure that Pagliano's
testimony will help put the email scandal to rest.

"Hillary Clinton's albatross and the greatest wild card of the
upcoming election is the FBI investigation of her use of a
private server," Greg Valliere, the chief global strategist at
Horizon Investments, wrote in his daily note to clients Thursday.

"Pagliano presumably knows a lot, and at the very least his
testimony will prompt the FBI to interview other top Clinton
aides — and, in all likelihood, Clinton herself," Valliere added.
"This is a deadly serious issue for her."

Former US Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who served under
President George W. Bush,
told Fox News in an interview that Pagliano's deal with the
Justice Department "simply confirms" that the investigation into
Clinton's setup is "very serious" and is "not going away anytime
soon."

Pagliano "can tell us if there were ever discussions on the
nature of what was going to be moved over onto that private
server," Mukasey said, referring to the FBI's investigation
into whether Clinton or her aides ever mishandled
classified material while she was at the State Department.

"He would be out of his mind not to volunteer everything"
he knows, Mukasey added. "The only thing he has to lose is the
possibility of being prosecuted for perjury or
obstruction."

Hillary
Clinton.AP Photo/Matt
Rourke

The scandal has dogged Clinton for nearly a year. Last March, she
first admitted to exclusively using a private email account to
send and receive work-related emails while she served as
secretary of state.

The controversy compelled her to hand over roughly 30,000
work-related emails to the State Department, which have been
released in batches since last year.

Pagliano has remained a shadowy figure, even though he is perhaps
one of the people most familiar with Clinton's setup and her
motivations behind wanting to use a private email server while
she served in Obama's administration.

A group of lawmakers led by Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chair
of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
had sought emails belonging to Pagliano in Clinton's inbox
while she served as secretary of state, saying in December that
it was the committee's "highest-priority request."

But the State Department said it could not find any
emails belonging to Pagliano sent before Clinton left office in
2013.

Significantly, Clinton deleted about 30,000 emails that she says
were "personal" in nature before handing it over to the FBI,
which has been looking into whether Clinton or her aides
mishandled classified material by using a private email account.

Around the time she handed over the server, a House
committee requested access to it to ensure that she had not
deleted any work-related emails. But her lawyer, David
Kendall,
told the committeethat Clinton aides had changed the
server's settings so that only emails she sent and received in
the previous 60 days would be saved.

Investigators also are attempting to find out whether any
sensitive information was stored on the server after it was
handed it over from Pagliano's oversight to Platte River,
which is "not
cleared" to have access to classified material.

In August, Platte River's attorney
said the server was "blank" when it was transferred to
federal agents, but did not clarify how that process
took place. Now that he has been granted immunity,
Paglianomaybe more willing to
explainthe rationale behind wiping the server
clean.

Bryan
Pagliano, center, a former State Department employee who helped
set up and maintain a private email server used by Hillary Rodham
Clinton.AP Photo/Cliff
Owen

News of Pagliano's deal with the Justice Department
comes just over a week aftera federal judge
ruled that State Department officials should be questioned
about whether Clinton's use of a private email server while she
served as secretary of state underminedpublic access to official government records, as required
under the Freedom of Information Act.

"There has been a constant drip, drip, drip of
declarations. When does it stop?" US District
Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said in decision last Tuesday,
according to The Washington Post. "This case is about
the public’s right to know."

Clinton, for her part, doesn't seem too worried.

"Look, I'm well aware of the drip, drip, drip,"
she told CNN's Chris Cuomo last week at a town-hall event.

"I've been in the public arena for 25
years, and have been the subject of a lot of ongoing attacks, and
misinformation and all the rest of it. ... Thefacts are that every single time somebody has
hurled these charges against me, which they have done, it's
proved to be nothing. And this is no different than
that."